Little Critter has been a standard installment on the bookshelves of children since my own childhood, and it’s a rare child who can resist his unique brand of innocent exploration.

Where is My Frog is a classic lift-the-flap book that features Little Critter and his search for his pet frog who escapes on a family fishing trip.  The text is simple “Is the frog in the log?” followed by a page with a log incorporated into the illustration, complete with a flap children can check behind to see if the frog is there.

There’s a happy, feel-good ending, and the short book text makes this a great pick for toddlers through preschoolers.  My two-year-old is in love with flap-based books, so this is a perfect introduction to Mercer Mayer’s illustrations and storytelling for her.  Of course, my older children (4, and 7) also like to listen in when mom reads this one.)

While the flaps are quite sturdy, and so are the thick pages, parents should of course keep in mind their specific child’s tendency to rip and tear, because flaps are always vulnerable.  Our book is thankfully (and surprisingly) still intact!

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

Okay, so you likely don’t want or need to know about all of my color mixing experiments, but today I’m realizing that my color mixing skills need work.  I keep trying to make a dusty rose and keep running into a wall!  ARGH!

Ah well, I think I’ve learned a lot from my efforts today, and my many failed test mixes…well, okay – maybe not TOO many failed test mixes.

Onward and upward!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Ramblers Way. All opinions are 100% mine.

It’s a fairly well known phenomenon – large ‘box stores’ building on the outskirts of towns, driving consumer traffic away from downtown areas and city cores where many ‘mom and pop’ establishments once flourished.  Many of these smaller businesses have already closed in cities both large and small.  Even Edmonton, our city of choice, suffers from the ‘big box store’ on the outskirts of town problem.  There are still office towers downtown and apartment buildings but little else.  The city has been trying to revitalize the core, but it still struggles.  Our city has also seen many jobs outsourced to foreign countries.  My step-father used to work in a call center that employed some 2,000 people before those jobs were shipped overseas.

We live in Canada, but seeing the label Made in America, is almost like seeing Made in Canada (an even rarer occurrence.)  I feel like Americans are our brothers and sisters to the south.

Ramblers Way Farm is one of the few companies dedicated to keeping things domestic – not only do they source all of the wool they make their clothing with domestically, but they manufacture in small towns, and even have their corporate office in a vintage building they’ve restored in a small town in Maine.  They are truly committed to keeping things real and local and have even achieved Gold Lead Certification levels for environmental standards.

I really appreciate their heart for local industry and community, it shows that they truly care for more than the bottom line.

Well, this Ninky Nonk repairing business is turning out to be quite time consuming.  This is day 2 and we still don’t have the transmission out!  I know Larry is getting a bit frustrated, but I have faith in his handy-man abilities!  Everything is so crammed in to the ‘insides’ it’s a bit tricky to figure out how to get in there!

Prayers appreciated .

Some of my LONG time blog readers may remember that in the very, very early days of this blog I received a terrible boiling water burn on my left foot (it left an ugly scar.)  I spilled some boiling water on top of my foot, and ouch, the burn was huge, I couldn’t walk, and after a couple of weeks it started to look/act sort of infected and hurt even more, so it was off to the doctor!

That experience has taught me that it pays to have some medical supplies on hand at home (like Burnshield dressings.)  When I did arrive at the hospital, they treated my foot for several days with a very wonderful, pain relieving, burn healing ointment that contained silver.  I can’t help but think that if we’d had a greater assortment of medical supplies on hand, my healing time and lack of mobility could have been dramatically shortened.

Even proper immediate care after the burn would have been great.  Sadly, we didn’t have any Burnshield dressings amongst our medical supplies, so we just winged it. Oh Burnshield, where were you?

Live and learn…

Yesterday my mother-in-law gave herself a pressure washer wound in the leg.  The gun got away on her and sprayed water through her pants, cutting a little hole in her flesh.  Umm, ouch.  After looking it up on the internet, pressure washer wounds aren’t uncommon, and can be very serious, so it’s always best to have a doctor take a look.  She went into the ER and everything should be fine, she just have to keep an eye on it.

I just wanted to say, please, please, please be careful with pressure washers.  They only spray water, true, but they can be very dangerous tools when handled improperly and without regard for safety precautions.

Well, ever since we started driving our ‘new to us’ minivan, we’ve been noticing  a strange high-pitched grind/squeal coming from the left front wheel area.  Today we discovered what the problem is!  It’s not the timing belt, it’s not the water pump (neither of those things are by the wheel anyway) but it has something to do with the gears that are at the end of the transmission shaft.

For lack of a better technical explanation, one of those geared things is grinding against the oil pan because it’s moving in and out too much.  And it’s trying to eat it’s way through the metal casing!  Noooooo!  It actually has a pretty good start on the job, so Larry is very busy fixing up the ‘Ninky Nonk’ for a few days.

Yes, Ninky Nonk won out over Madame Blueberry after we saw an episode of In the Night Garden at Grandma’s house when we were in for the dentist.  In any case, I’m very happy to have a husband who is willing, and ABLE to do repairs to our vehicles when the repairs don’t involve complicated computer systems.  Hopefully we won’t be needing to head to a Phoenix auto repair shop any time soon (wouldn’t that be a drive!)

I haven’t posted much about our printer struggles on our website, but it has been an on-going saga for the past two months.  Buying new printers, trying to get them to work, calling tech support and getting them to replace mal-functioning parts.  Argh.  There’s a reason that I haven’t been posting!

In any case we FINALLY have a printer that is working for us – hallelujah!  Hopefully we will soon be able to make our copywork titles available in print format!

I have to say, printers are SO much more complicated now than they ever used to be (bring back the dot matrix!)

You won’t find these items at your local U-Haul! truck chains and ratchet binders, bulk quantities of nylon and polyester webbing, and other moving supplys can be rigged up to move almost anything. With the high load limits and huge quantities of this webbing, you can move the BIG stuff. We use some of the thinner, prepared for general market stuff in our own moves that comes with its own little ratchets built in, but it doesn’t really compare.

Well, as promised here is my very simple “How to Make Pot Cheese” tutorial.  I’m afraid I don’t have pictures though .

1.  Place a very large pot of fresh milk on the stove on high (you can save up for a few days, just make sure you keep your milk in the fridge, we don’t want wild cultured cheese, that’s more of a cottage cheese approach.)  If you use whole milk your finished cheese will be slightly soft and creamy, if you use skim milk your finished cheese will be firm and squeaky.

2.  Stir, stir, stir, milk burns easily and you want to heat it until just before a rolling boil.

3.  Once your milk starts to show signs of boiling (make sure it doesn’t foam up and boil over – whoo, that makes a mess), grab some lemon juice in a bottle or vinegar (I prefer lemon juice for flavor myself) and squirt it in while quickly reducing the heat.

4.  Stir to distribute the lemon juice evenly.  Watch for signs of separation.  If the milk turns into two distinct parts – a yellowish clear fluid (whey) and chunks of white stuff (curds), you have success!  If your milk stays white and whole, add more lemon juice, stir, repeat as needed to achieve separation.

(This isn’t a super-scientific technique that involves measuring, ph checks etc. just eyeball it.)

5.  Once you’ve achieved separation, pour off the whey (some people like to save some for soaking grains/beans, or diluting in water as a digestive tonic, you can also feed it to your livestock.)

6.  Strain your curds – this is your cheese!  If you want a firm cheese you can cut into cubes and fry, put a plate on top of your cheese in the colander that you strained it in and put a weight on top like a jug or jar full of water.  If not, you can just crumble the cheese up into whatever dish you’d like to serve it in.

7. Salting your cheese before adding it into your dish will help a LOT.  Pot cheese needs a lot of salt – it has a very mild flavor, and it will soak up a LOT of salt from your recipe.

8.  Enjoy!  This fresh cheese is very versatile, with a mild flavor that adapts to most uses.  If you have a milking cow, don’t let that skim milk go to waste!  This is a great way to extend all your family’s favorite dishes!